Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? – William O. Douglas

Daily Archives: July 18, 2009

RNC Chairman Michael Steele with some help with Dubya and Cheney are determined to give the country economic whiplash. We know that Bush and Republicans spent money like there was no tomorrow because they, though certainly not America, won either way. A lot of the Bush-Republican spending was about pandering to special interest. As Bush was leaving office he even touted his Medicare drug benefit program as one of his great accomplishments. One could call it corporate socialism ( still a guiding principle of conservatism), corruption or just crazy, but that drug benefit was a huge burden on Medicare and working Americans payroll taxes. Having had six years to learn some math, the normal math the rest of us use, one would hope Republicans would improve. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, in the grand Republican tradition has embraced what got Bush through eight years, the big lie. Tell them big and often – RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s Fuzzy Math: Obama Administration Created $10 Trillion National Deficit

Steele proceeded to launch into a rambling answer that used fuzzy math to assert that, in only six months, President Obama has added “10 trillion dollars” to the national deficit, while President Bush is to blame for only “a trillion”:

[ ]…Steele is clearly confusing the difference between our national debt, which stands at roughly $11.4 trillion, and this year’s budget deficit, which just exceeded $1 trillion.

To help jog Steele’s memory, here’s a bit of a deficit recap: Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion in 2001. Budget experts projected a $710 billion surplus for 2009 when he came into office. But the deficit soon exploded, thanks largely to the Bush tax cuts — which accounted for 42 percent of the deficit. When Bush left office, he handed President Obama a projected $1.2 trillion budget deficit for this year, the largest ever.

As for the debt, when President Bush took office, it was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion.

Just last month, the New York Times published the results of an examination from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The report, which examined federal spending stretching back almost a decade, found that Obama “is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits”

Putting aside the utter lack of integrity of the conservatives that belong to the big lie school of politics, there are some positive aspects. Steele reminds us that Republicans have no desire to reinvent themselves as the honorable opposition. Steele also gives us the opportunity to once again debunk this widespread and patently false talking point that is often repeated by the far right media. They conflate and distort deficits and the national debt to make it look like Bush inherited a headache and left the country in great shape and some how President Obama managed to create the current economic crisis in six short months. Its ironic that Bush and Republicans had decided, despite tons of warnings along the way, to run our economic train off the rails before Obama was even a Senator. Steele and his comrades were the original steal from the future of the middle-class to make the wealthy wealthier party.